To think a company can't demote you after stress leave?

[GreenHeritier]

Hi all, posting here for traffic and have NCed to protect friend's anonymity.

A close friend of mine has been on stress leave for 5 months following a burnout. Her role was a high-pressure, high-responsibility managerial role running a large team. She is now feeling better and had a few conversations with HR about returning to work.

She has requested that they make some tweaks to her role so she can avoid stressful, high-pressure responsibilities like dealing with well-known difficult people or particularly stressful projects.

HR has now said that they can't accommodate her request and that they therefore don't think she is fit to take her original role back as she can't perform the duties the role requires. They have offered her a smaller, low-responsibility role with no managerial duties, but with the same salary as before.

AIBU I think what they are doing is illegal and she should speak to a lawyer?

Does your friend know you're posting like this about her? I have mental health issues and would be horrified if someone was posting a thread on AIBU and getting these kinds of comments. The only advice you need to give her is to speak to ACAS.

I think her company have been very accommodating pre and post sick leave and your friend needs to be a bit more self aware.

Is your friend part of a union? If not she ought to seek one out. She needs good advice and someone who can help her with anything possible.
It does sound like they have the right to demote your friend if she can't cope with the workload and if they are offering her the same amount of money, they can claim they're looking out for her best interests. However as you say, her smaller role being made redundant is the biggest worry.
She would need to prove that the workload is excessive basically. Anyone can claim the workload is too much, but that doesn't mean it's legally considered excessive. They could just say it's to much for her and would be managed better by someone else. The best thing your friend can do is think of specific times she can write down in detail when she believed the workload was excessive and take it back to the HR department and ask for an assessment to be done on how much work should actually be done in a certain timescale.
She also needs to ask what support is available if she returns to her role as normal and the normal workload.

It is concerning they're offering the same money rather than just taking some of the work off her and getting someone else to help out. I'd be suspicious of that as well. Definitely tell your friend to contact a union rep and take write a detailed statement with times that the workload was too much for the job she has.

It is concerning they're offering the same money rather than just taking some of the work off her and getting someone else to help out.
She's had a deputy/assistant for the past year. They're still in role, alone.

Okay so given your timeline friend started job I’m guessing 2 years working then the 5 months off, not 2 years including the 5 months?
So from the start she made several complaints to her line manager about workload, manager/ company did not terminate your friends job which they could have done leaving her with little recourse to any action as she had under two years service. They then employed someone to assist your friend in doing the job required, after a year of this assist your friend still could manage all aspects of the job, this caused her so much stress that she needed 5 months sick leave. Then when asked what would make her return easier she then identified more parts of the job that she would prefer not do to. I’m pretty sure that HR would have expected her to say she would prefer a phased return to work, maybe part-time to start with rather than identify parts of the job she didn’t want to do. In the meantime the assistant was doing the full job presumably competently enough if they were being considered for the post permanently so the job is obviously do-able? The truth seems to be your friend never actually managed to do the job she was employed to do and being off with stress is really not the whole story is it? The company have offered an alternative that they believe your friend can do, it’s her only option is it not? If she is unhappy with what is offered she should resign.

I work in HR and to be honest it sounds like they have taken on board what she has said and offered her an alternative role without the things she said were creating stress. Has she had an OH referral and a return to work plan?

You cannot operate in a high level role and ask to not have contact with certain "difficult" people if you have to interact with them to do your role. Your friend also hasn't suffered any detriment if she is on the same salary. Her perception that this is a lesser role is that - her perception - she either accepts the new role offered or asks to be returned to her old role. But the company have the right to agree to what changes/ tweaks they will do to her old role to accommodate her back into the role.

@GreenHeritier her original job was obviously too stressful for her to the point it hurt her mentally. Maybe a job with less responsibilities and workload will benefit her. I wouldn’t see this as a demotion. Surely a lower salary but less stress will help her improve her mental health?

And its really not fair to leave staff with a manager who is not able to do their job. That can damage their career progression as well as causing them stress.

@KatieMarina

Is your friend part of a union? If not she ought to seek one out. She needs good advice and someone who can help her with anything possible. It does sound like they have the right to demote your friend if she can't cope with the workload and if they are offering her the same amount of money, they can claim they're looking out for her best interests. However as you say, her smaller role being made redundant is the biggest worry. She would need to prove that the workload is excessive basically. Anyone can claim the workload is too much, but that doesn't mean it's legally considered excessive. They could just say it's to much for her and would be managed better by someone else. The best thing your friend can do is think of specific times she can write down in detail when she believed the workload was excessive and take it back to the HR department and ask for an assessment to be done on how much work should actually be done in a certain timescale. She also needs to ask what support is available if she returns to her role as normal and the normal workload.

It is concerning they're offering the same money rather than just taking some of the work off her and getting someone else to help out. I'd be suspicious of that as well. Definitely tell your friend to contact a union rep and take write a detailed statement with times that the workload was too much for the job she has.

Unfortunately if someone else has been doing the role in the interim as seems the case, that would be hard to prove.

Taking notes, have a similar issue with a lady at our work.

@Dontcallmewifey

And its really not fair to leave staff with a manager who is not able to do their job. That can damage their career progression as well as causing them stress.

This was me in my first proper job, completely wrecked my confidence and we all flourished once the manager in question left

Not legally qualified. But I think if she’s not up to the job then they have made the necessary changes , and in this case, have had to change her role to accommodate and support her needs. No reduction to salary .. I don’t think they have broken any laws. If you can’t perform the role, then you just can’t perform the role. Sounds like her company have been very supportive.

@GreenHeritier I think will be ok if she retains the same level of title. So if she was senior Blah & cheese manager she needs to retain the senior manager, and maybe become Senior project manager. I personally hate managing staff, it takes so much energy and I have to listen to the snowflakes reasons why it's ok to be late everyday and they over share far too much personal info 😬

If your friend can't handle the stress that goes with the position (there always will be nasty colleagues, deadlines etc) then shouldnt work on this role. It is incredibly reasonable to offer her the same salary with fewer responsibilities. If your friend is not happy it would be better to have some sort of settlement agreement with the company and leave if she is worried about demotion on her career

[quote hamandcgeese]@GreenHeritier I think will be ok if she retains the same level of title. So if she was senior Blah & cheese manager she needs to retain the senior manager, and maybe become Senior project manager. I personally hate managing staff, it takes so much energy and I have to listen to the snowflakes reasons why it's ok to be late everyday and they over share far too much personal info 😬[/quote]
She's in no position to demand she retains a title on a level she's not competent to perform on.

Your friend needs to face the fact that she can't go back to how things were- the team have moved on. The company will be seen to have exercised their duty of care in offering a different role, with the stressful elements removed.

She needs to change the loss-of-face mindset about the new role/ working for her previous assistant, and accept that she has the chance to use her skills in a different way. She can then use this as a springboard to get back into work, and perhaps look for other roles in a new workplace where she has no history.

Her future career doesn't depend on job title or who her manager is. Future employers could well be interested in how she managed to return to work in challenging circumstances.

Everything MaskedAvenger said.

It sounds like your friend struggled from the day she started this job, I know she worked her socks off to get there but it really sounds like she has been promoted beyond her competency. They even hired someone to support her for a year and she still went off with stress, even with someone to help her with the difficult bits. I don't think she can say the job was unreasonable either if the right-hand person has been performing well on their own in the role.

I don't think HR tricked her. I think they listened to what she felt she could handle, and identified this other role that matched her expectations. If she wanted a return to her old role in full, but just phased or something, she would have said so. But she can't permanently cherry pick the bits she likes and make someone more junior take responsibility for the bits she doesn't - especially if that's working with other team leaders at her level, not theirs.

I think she needs to take this on the chin, realise she's not cut out for some of it and look for a role that works for her - unfortunately the reason that job progression comes with more pay and more prestige is because usually it gets more difficult as you go up the ladder - you have to manage more people, more stress, the expectations are bigger, etc. Most people "top out" at a level they can handle well, but then get promoted beyond this and don't perform well (the Peter Principle).

Maskedrevenger, sorry!

Some of the other clients and portfolios which the more junior staff are managing may, in future, become more complicated and conflicted. It could be that more junior staff who earn considerably less, end up managing trickier accounts than the ones your friend is dealing with. That would cause tensions.

I think your friend has an amazing company.
She can’t cope with the job, whether it’s mental health or the people are shits, but they’re still employing her and paying her. Not all of us can do every job and I can’t see the downside.

trying to help out a friend who is driving herself nuts with anxiety about her return to work

"driving herself nuts with anxiety" is the key here. Your friend is not thinking in a healthy way yet and if she's using words like "suspicion" and "humiliating" then that's worrying too, her problems sound deeper than "perfectionism" and I don't know what MH support she's getting but she's not out of the woods. She doesn't seem to recognise that her company have tried to help her by finding a lower stress role at the same salary.

However, friend suspects that there is no real business need for the role and it is more of a "nice to have" job that they are creating just to park her somewhere.

So what if they are? She's not ready for a company-critical job yet. Sounds as if she feels like a failure and she's projecting all over the place,

and frankly I don't know what to advice.

After 5 months off her focus should be looking after her own mental health and making a healthy and successful return to work. She can think about longer term job security and career ambitions after that.

Is your friend part of a union? If not she ought to seek one out.

I don't know about all unions but some won't take on an ongoing problem - it's like taking out insurance after you've been burgled and expecting them to pay.

@Nith

She had verbally raised issues with her manager regarding excessive workload multiple times, and the manager allowed her to recruit for a "right hand" position reporting to her to help with her workload. That person is the person who has been running the team ad interim for the last 5 months

Does that mean the right hand person was managing the team and workload successfully without needing their own right hand person? And that your friend couldn't manage despite having assistance? It really doesn't sound as if it was the right job for her, and she needs to think about whether she wouldn't actually be happier not to have managerial responsibilities. It's no reflection on her, it sounds as if it's simply the case that her talents lie elsewhere.

That's exactly how it reads.

Many (20+) years ago I joined a company as assistant to someone like OP's friend who also couldn't cope. Within 18 months the manager was gone and I took over, before being promoted again within another 12 months.

The person I'd come in to assist just wasn't right for the role. He also thought he was massively overworked and couldn't deal with difficult staff.

In reality he wasn't delegating enough and was trying to be friends with people rather than manage them. The job wasn't that crazy.

Some people just aren't cut out for progression through the more stressful echelons, and there's nothing wrong with that - there are loads of jobs I know I couldn't do, everyone has their limits.

OP's friend should be biting their hand off for this lifeline because if she insists on a temporary sidestep before going back into the full role - no one will just snip bits of a job off that she can't cope with, so it will be the full role - in 6 months she'll be off with stress again and probably getting canned.

You can't be a star striker with a broken leg. Doesn't mean you never will be again but equally doesn't mean the team shouldn't be encouraged play well in the meantime with someone elsein the striker position. You can still train with the team until you're match fit.

She herself has said she cant do her role by saying she wont do high stress projects or people.